6% of Americans Enjoy Eating Roadkill?

Encountering a DEER on the road in the middle of the night can be VERY terrifying . . . not to mention destructive if there’s a collision.  But on the plus side, you now have like two months’ worth of venison tacos!

A new poll asked people if they’ve ever dined on roadkill, and 6% said YES.  They didn’t ask how regularly this happens, so it’s unclear how many of them are enthusiastic about it, and how many were one-and-done.

89% of people said NO they’ve never dined on roadkill . . . and 5% of people said they’re “not sure.”  Interestingly, eating roadkill was more common among younger adults under 44 (9%) . . . compared to folks 45 and older (3%).

27% of people say they’re fine with people collecting roadkill for personal use . . . while 33% say they believe it should be illegal.

48% of people say they have been in a vehicle that has hit an animal . . . unintentionally OR intentionally.  47% claim they haven’t.  And 5% say they’re not sure.  Midwesterners were most likely to have hit an animal.

(This poll was probably inspired by a recent news story about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitting to dumping a dead bear in New York’s Central Park back in 2014.

RFK Jr. claims he was going falcon-hunting outside the city, when he witnessed a woman hit the bear.  He says he and his crew got out of his van and loaded the bear into it . . . with plans to “skin the bear . . .  and put the meat in his refrigerator.”

But after the hunting trip, he went to a fancy steakhouse in New York City, and it got late.  He didn’t have time to take the bear home because he had to catch a flight, so he just decided to dump it in Central Park.

He placed a bike on top of it to stage it as a bike accident, because . . . at the time . . . New York had just added a bike lane in the area, and there “had been a series of bike accidents . . . every day.” (???)

New York state allows for roadkill to be taken, but authorities must be notified.  It doesn’t sound like he did that . . . because the random dead bear became a years-long mystery in New York.

Here’s RFK Jr. telling his side of this wild story to Roseanne Barr.)